


Debts and Stolen Hearts

by completelyhopeless



Category: Leverage
Genre: Community: comment_fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're thieves. Stealing is their life, but they're not expecting to steal each other's hearts. He wouldn't admit to losing his, ever, but he did have a few debts. So did she.</p>
<p>Or four to five times Parker stole Eliot's heart and one to two times he stole hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Debts and Stolen Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evil_Little_Dog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Little_Dog/gifts).



> For the request [here](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/560685.html?thread=78979373#t78979373) for the prompt: _[Leverage (Parker/Eliot) 5 times Parker stole Eliot's heart and 1 time he stole hers.](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/277186.html?thread=52764098#t52764098)_
> 
> I think I would have made this easier on myself if I hadn't gotten it in my head to try and use only canon moments to base this on. I easily could have made up five moments, but I had to reacquaint myself with the episodes and the characters and get them right.
> 
> I really wanted this to be perfect. I know it isn't, especially since I went ahead and cheated on the last part because it's a mutual heart stealing. Kind of. So there's 5 + 2, I guess, if one counts the last as Parker's, too. Or maybe my math is completely wrong on this. That could happen. I stopped understanding math back in high school.

* * *

Eliot had heard of Parker before he worked with her. Hardison's ego would be bruised, but Eliot had never heard of him and didn't think much of his age of the geek. He had a way of doing things that worked for him, and he'd never been let down by his own fists. People were something else, and he'd been knifed in the back a few too many times to trust anyone, especially not this team.

Or that woman. Definitely not her.

She was twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. That had all the earmarks of a bad idea, the kind of situation where other people shot first and ask questions later, but he didn't use guns. He got close when he needed to, and he was saving that for when the job was over. 

Then she jumped off that building, not scared of a damn thing. Crazy, stupid, but he admired her for it. Just a little. It took a certain kind of person to be able to do that, took guts or something else, and while he figured it was the something else, he knew she was rare enough. He'd served with good men in the past, but even with how brave and fearless and dedicated as they had been, how downright stupid some of the others were, they still couldn't or wouldn't have done what Parker did.

Then she changed in front of them without shame, and Eliot couldn't help noticing that she had a body to go with that crazy. Thin and trim but rounded in the right places, she was fit because she was a thief, and she was a good thief. Hell, she might be a lot closer to his type than he would admit.

* * *

Parker was scared of horses.

He didn't understand that, not for a minute. He wasn't an idiot. It wasn't like he hadn't heard of accidents where someone was thrown from a horse and broke something or even died. Those things happened, and he wasn't trying to say they didn't happen. Horse riding did have risks, and some horses could be dangerous. He didn't try and deny it because that was true. Thing was, though, if you were good to the horse, the horse was good to you.

He'd known plenty of good horses. Some of them probably remembered him with more fondness than their owners or even people he once called friends.

Parker didn't seem to fear much, but she was afraid of horses. Something about clowns, which he didn't even want to know about. He didn't care. It didn't matter. 

What mattered was that despite her grumbling and her fear, she went in there for Eliot. She went in there because he wouldn't back down, because he insisted, because he had a promise and an obligation to fulfill to a girl he'd once loved.

He owed Parker for that.

* * *

_“Cut off his arms. And his head. I want to kill him. Can we make that happen?”_

Eliot had said yes.

He hadn't even realized that he had until he did. He had given up killing people, had found a way to use knives for something better than killing, to create instead of destroy. Toby had kept him from falling all the way down. Eliot had pulled himself back from that edge. He wanted to keep himself there, that was why he stuck around Nate and the others. They kept him level, kept him from the darkness that was inside him. 

Normally he would have kept on trying to hold that darkness back, but this Rand bastard had made Parker cry, and Eliot _wanted_ to make this guy pay. He wanted to make it happen in a slow, painful way. He could do it just the way she had wanted it to happen. 

He could see it. He would cut off Rand's arms, yeah, and he'd do it with a dull knife at an incremental pace to make sure the agony last for even longer. Rand would be begging for death before Eliot had really gotten started.

He'd do that. For Parker.

No one was allowed to make her cry.

Ever.

* * *

One thing Eliot figured out quickly enough was that Archie Leech deserved to have his ass kicked, and the second thought to follow that was that Eliot was just the person to do it. He didn't care how old the man was or how messed up Parker was. She deserved a hell of a lot better than Archie Leech had given her. Hell, if he'd shown her more than how to be a thief, she might not be half the train wreck she was now. She'd know things that everyone had a right to know. Eliot might not deserve them now after all he'd done, but Parker should have had them growing up.

Things like school and county fairs and friends and family. She should have had _family,_ damn it, because that man had taken her in and should have done right by her. She should have had friends, too, but it wasn't the same. She could make friends now, but Leech had taken away her best chance at having a family. If she'd had that, she would have had friends, too.

Then when Parker went and got herself trapped in a building for Leech and wouldn't come out because she was trying to protect his family, Eliot was pissed as hell. He'd gotten up to the window, had her way out, and she'd _gone back._ Gone back for a man who wouldn't acknowledge her as a daughter but used her as a thief.

Eliot should have walked away then, but he'd gone in instead. He'd never really figured on Parker being noble, but she was, and he'd be damned if he was going to let her be caught for Leech's sake. He was going to keep her safe. That was what he did.

* * *

Eliot taught her how to feel again.

Eliot let her into his head for a moment.

Even though he was busy, though he didn't want to do it, he'd stopped and taken the time and taught her how to like stuff. Eliot showed her how to feel. He told her about the past, and Eliot didn't really talk about the past, so that was something in itself. 

When he showed her the food, she'd said it was just food, but she was wrong. He said so. He said it was so much more than that. It was art. It was creating. It let him feel. Food was life. It was Eliot's thing. He had found it and used it to make himself feel things again. He was better because he cooked. He made art. He made it so that others could feel what he was feeling.

He took her words about needing to feel more and fixed the meal because of it. She liked that he wanted to fix it for her, but she didn't like that she still couldn't feel anything.

Then she was eating and she tasted something that felt _different._ She felt _different._ She felt something, and she never felt anything. It was wonderful. It was so wonderful that she would have found Eliot on the spot and kissed him for it. She was in love.

With food. Just with food.

She wasn't in love with anything more than food.

Well, maybe art. She'd learned how to like art, too.

She liked that she could feel.

She owed Eliot for that.

* * *

“I owe you,” Parker said, finding Eliot alone in the dark. She'd considered how to do this heist for a while now, but the timing was wrong or she was wrong. She hadn't thought she could do it or that she should, but she knew now that she had to, that she couldn't go on if she hadn't done this.

“No, Parker. We're good. You don't owe me anything.” Eliot gestured toward the door. “You can go. You probably should go. It's fine. We don't do debts, and you don't have one with me.”

“Yes, I do,” she insisted. She looked at him, straight in his eyes, and she thought she saw that look that meant he was about to give into her. She liked that look. She liked it a lot. “You taught me how to feel and I needed that. I needed a lot more than that, but you helped me. You fixed me. Not completely, no one could.”

“Maybe you don't need fixing. Not as much as people think. Not as much as _I_ thought.”

She smiled at that. “Maybe what I need is you.”

“What are you doing, Parker?”

“Stealing your heart,” she answered with another grin. She felt like bouncing or jumping off a building. She couldn't contain herself right now, not when she saw that look. “Is it working?”

“Yeah,” he said, getting close to her in just the way she wanted. “It's working.”

“Good. 'Cause you kind of got mine already, and it's only fair if I have yours.”

“You had it a long time ago, Parker. There was just no way in hell I was admitting it.”

She laughed, pulling him in for a kiss.


End file.
